Charles Allen Chavous; Stolen Valor in the courtroom

We’ve written about Charles Allen Chavous in May and June this year. He used his phony POW and war hero stories to avoid a long prison sentence for his participation in a murder back in 1974 – he was sentenced to five years of probation and a $1000 fine. Chief Tango and TSO send us a link to an article in Stars & Stripes in which Jon Harper drills a little deeper into the story;

Judge Michael Annis of the Richmond County, Ga., Superior Court, did not respond to queries about whether Chavous’ purported service record played any role in his sentencing decision, handed down in April.

Assistant District Attorney John Markwalter said he did not recommend any particular sentence as part of the plea agreement. Markwalter said the punishment was left to the discretion of the court, and he would not speculate as to why Annis chose not to give the man any prison time.

Kay Levine, a professor at Emory University Law School in Atlanta who specializes in criminal law, said that a defendant’s history often plays a big role in sentencing, especially their criminal history.

[…]

But Levine said Connell’s portrayal of his client as a war hero could have been a major factor in him avoiding prison.

“The war hero story, I think, would function pretty heavily in this calculation of what’s his just dessert,” Levine said. “There are all of these things that [suggest that] the past is this record of heroism, and also tragedy … to the extent that he was injured in Vietnam fighting for the country. … That factors into how much punishment does he deserve now, because it kind of serves as a counterweight to the wrongdoing of the crime. Somebody who doesn’t have that, there is no counterweight.”

We posted Chavous’ DD214 in May. It was riddled with blatant forgery, as cited by our buddy Doug Sterner in the S&S article;

Parts of Block 24 (Awards) and Block 25 (Education and Training) clearly are in a different font than the rest of the DD-214.
The word “Gallantry” is misspelled “Gallentry” in Block 25.
The “Navy Cross Medal” and the “Silver Star Medal” — as they appear in the document — are referred to simply as “Navy Cross” and “Silver Star,” without the word “Medal” appearing after them.
Block 30 (Remarks) states that Chavous served in Vietnam 30 Jan 1970-1 December 1970 and then again from 15 Jan 1971-6 July 1971. But the font listing the second tour is different from the text above it, which indicates it came from a different typewriter.
Block 30 (Remarks) states that Chavous was “(Missing in Action) November 21-24, 1970,” but the (month/day/year) date format is different from the date format used just above it, and it is not the proper (date/month/year) format used by the military. This suggests the “Missing in Action” part was added later by someone else.
In Block 5a & 6 (Rank), his rank is shown as “Sgt.” with a date of rank of Jan. 3, 1970, but the “g” in “Sgt” is in a different font than the “g” in “Augusta,” which indicates that “Sgt” was written with a different typewriter.

“That DD-214 is BOGUS AS HELL,” Sterner said in an email.

Here is the forged DD214 for your edification;

OK, so the judge won’t answer whether the forgery played a part in the sentencing and the prosecutor won’t take the blame, but I don’t see either of them bringing charges that Chavous brought a forged government document into the court and presented it as mitigation for his role in the murder. I mean, if I was an officer of the court, I’d want to send a message to the thousands of criminals out there who would seek to influence the court with phony documentation. But, I guess that’s just me.

TSO communicated with Chavous’ lawyer and some guy named Mothax wrote about it.